Ph.D. Student, Jason P. Kopp, Wins Award

Jason Kopp was selected to receive the 2012 Conference of Southern Graduate Schools (CSGS) Master's Thesis Award in Social Sciences, Business and Education for his thesis entitled “Gathering Further Validity Evidence for the Academic Entitlement Questionnaire: Examining the Relationship Between Noncompliance and Academic Entitlement”. The CSGS Master's Thesis Awards are granted based on the clarity of style and presentation, scholarship, research methodology, and contributions to the field.

Jason’s award-winning thesis focused on the measurement and modeling of academic entitlement. Jason’s thesis was completed while he was enrolled in the Quantitative Psychology Concentration within the Psychological Sciences MA program at James Madison University (http://www.psyc.jmu.edu/psycsciences/).

During the first year of his Psychological Sciences MA program, Jason worked extensively with Dr. Sara Finney (his advisor) and Dr. Tracy Zinn to develop the Academic Entitlement Questionnaire, which represented the first psychometrically-sound measure of academic entitlement. The development of the Academic Entitlement Questionnaire and its measurement properties was published in the journal Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development.

During his second year in the MA program, Jason’s completed his award-winning thesis. Using advanced structural equation modeling techniques, Jason conducted the first empirical study to link academic entitlement to uncivil student behaviors.

Jason continues his study of the psychometric properties of the Academic Entitlement Questionnaire, and, more generally, the study of advanced measurement techniques as a doctoral student in the Assessment & Measurement PhD program at James Madison University (http://www.psyc.jmu.edu/assessment/).

This prestigious award will be presented to Jason, along with $1000, at the awards luncheon on Saturday, February 25, 2012, during the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools 41st Annual Meeting in Jacksonville, Florida.

The membership of CSGS is comprised of 163 institutions colleges and universities. You may read more about CSGS and see the list of member schools at the following link: http://www.csgs.org/index.html. Upon examining the listing of institutions (e.g., University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of Maryland, College of William & Mary, Emory University, University of Florida, University of Texas, University of Virginia) one realizes the caliber of competition students face for this award.